Edna Quotes

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The younger generation forms a country of its own. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world. ~ Edna Ferber

A grave is such a quiet place. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

A young city, Miami lacks the history, the roots, and the traditions of other major metropolitan areas. Everybody here is from someplace else. ~ Edna Buchanan

If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death. ~ Edna Ferber

Opposite to where she sat the water was a boggy brown, but not too far along it was a dark violet colour, always changing, the way the sweep of the current changed, but as she saw it, her own life did not change at all - the same routine, the same longing and the same loneliness. ~ Edna O'Brien

Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be. ~ Edna O'Brien

I had not the heart to tell her that great love stories told of the pain and separateness between men and women. ~ Edna O'Brien

The only people I really hate are servants. They're not really human beings at all. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

In the criminal justice system you see the worst people on their best behavior, unlike the civil system, where the best people behave at their worst. ~ Edna Buchanan

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

You're a right-looking eejit ~ Edna O'Brien

Beauty in all things-no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Nothing but rules. Rule the first: no callers at the front door. Rule the second: no callers at the back door. Rule the third: no going out after dark. The six dusters had to be washed each evening and accounted for. ~ Edna O'Brien

In his way and in his day he was a very modern father. "I want you to see all kinds," he would say to her. "I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time."
"What whole thing?"
"Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living.... ~ Edna Ferber

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night. ~ Edna O'Brien

I avoid the looming visitor,
Flee him adroitly around corners,
Hating him, wishing him well;

Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true:
That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;
And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools

Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies
As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child.

Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,
There may be.
But not enough to keep a bird alive.

There is a flaw amounting to a fissure
In such behaviour. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed
uprooted-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

We hide the truer part of ourselves when we love. ~ Edna O'Brien

We have so many voices in us, how do we know which ones to obey? ~ Edna O'Brien

And he whose soul is flat
the sky Will cave in on him by and by. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Jane Austen. Anyway, I'm not ~ Edna Ferber

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics. ~ Edna Ferber

Take up the song; forget the epitaph. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Unexplorer"

There was a road ran past our house
Too lovely to explore.
I asked my mother once - she said
That if you followed where it led
It brought you to the milk-man's door.
(That's why I have not traveled more.) ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time can make soft that iron wood. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mine is a body that should die at sea!
And have for a grave, instead of a grave
Six feet deep and the length of me,
All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,
Such as a living man might fear,
And eat me while I am firm and fresh, -
Not wait till I've been dead for a year! ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center
that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact. ~ Edna O'Brien

It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn't here. ~ Edna Ferber

For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply ... ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story. ~ Edna Ferber

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and ... you send them out into the world and hope that some day they'll send back money. ~ Edna Buchanan

Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess. ~ Edna Woolman Chase

Brush those tears from your eyes
And try and realize
That from now on
I'll always be true.
I went away
But I didn't mean to stay
And I will regret it until my dying day. ~ Edna O'Brien

I think that literature quite often emerges from areas where there has been a lack of articulation, like women's writing. ~ Edna Longley

As one looks with the beautiful eyes upon a soul ... Only God is perfect ~ Edna Stewart

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little. ~ Edna Ferber

But we want young men. Romance. Love and things, I said, despondently. ~ Edna O'Brien

You might have written. Every bit of your daily life interests me. I wrote this day fortnight but it was returned. Tampered with. ~ Edna O'Brien

She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. ~ Kate Chopin

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky ... ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Betty Dravis is a fantastic mix of Shirley Jackson, Edna Buchanan and Janis Joplin. Don't ask me how I came up with that unlikely comparison––I just feel it, and I haven't been drinking much tonight. ~ Mark Laflamme

Friends are family you choose. ~ Edna Buchanan

Every once in a while, there comes a story. A story that blows your mind. One where you know you've made a difference. That's what makes it all worthwhile. That and the anticipation. It's addictive, because you never know when it will happen, but when it does, nothing in the world is as important. ~ Edna Buchanan

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous. ~ Edna O'Brien

including Edna Millay, there were five such women: essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. ~ Kate Bolick

Even after several hospitalizations for alcohol and drug-related nervous breakdowns, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay defined sobriety as restricting her daily intake of liquor to a liter and a half of wine. ~ Judith Thurman

There are ... just two kinds of girls. Those who go down town Saturday nights, and those who don't. ~ Edna Ferber

When you fall in love, it is spring no matter when. Leaves falling make no difference, they are from another season ... ~ Edna O'Brien

We sat at long tables side by side in a big

dusty room where we laughed and carried

on until they told us to pipe down and paint.

The running joke was how we glowed,

the handkerchiefs we sneezed into lighting

up our purses when we opened them at night,

our lips and nails, painted for our boyfriends

as a lark, simmering white as ash in a dark room.

"Would you die for science?" the reporter asked us,

Edna and me, the main ones in the papers.

Science? We mixed up glue, water and radium

powder into a glowing greenish white paint

and painted watch dials with a little

brush, one number after another, taking

one dial after another, all day long,

from the racks sitting next to our chairs.

After a few strokes, the brush lost its shape,

and our bosses told us to point it with

our lips. Was that science?

I quit the watch factory to work in a bank

and thought I'd gotten class, more money,

a better life, until I lost a tooth in back

and two in front and my jaw filled up with sores.

We sued: Edna, Katherine, Quinta, Larice and me,

but when we got to court, not one of us

could raise our arms to take the oath.

My teeth were gone by then. "Pretty Grace

Fryer," they called me in the papers.

~ Eleanor Swanson

When something has been perfect, there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it. ~ Edna O'Brien

There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps. ~ Edna O'Brien

Ideally I'd like to spend two evenings a week talking to Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost. ~ Edna O'Brien

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death. ~ Edna Ferber

But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Writing is like carrying a fetus. ~ Edna O'Brien

The questions were so big they almost overwhelmed her.
Because ... maybe, just maybe there was some part of her that ... wanted that. Everyday with Mike. Time with Edna, and the girls. A simpler, quieter life. A life that revolved not around money or working but around .... love. A whole different kind of security than a person could ever get from a job. And even a type of happiness you couldn't reap from any career. ~ Toni Blake

She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. ~ Kate Chopin

I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, "Someday you must meet my mother." ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna restored the toffee to the centre of her tongue and sucking pleasurably, resumed her typing of Naked Love by Armand Levine. Its painstaking eroticism left her uninterested
as indeed it did most of Mr. Levine's readers, in spite of his efforts. He was a notable example of the fact that nothing can be duller than dull pornography. ~ Agatha Christie

[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie. ~ Dorothy Parker

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia. ~ Dame Edna Everage

When the leaves began to fall, all the visitors were gone, and the whistle from the train passing through Orange gave a long, lonesome, shrill sound as it rolled through without stopping to let off any passengers. ~ Edna Lewis

Hard work always pays off in the eyes of a God that never sleeps ... Who's always near and never far ~ Edna Stewart

It may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert. ~ Edna O'Brien

I don't call it hate . . . I call it an awakening . . . you were the girl I chose, pure, loyal, untainted, an exemplary wife, and instead I get a schemer, plotting to pursue her own rotten ambition under the rubric of poetry . . . what a mockery, what a marriage. ~ Edna O'Brien

Let us not forget such words, and all they mean, as hatred, bitterness, and rancor greed, intolerance, bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to man, his right to be himself and free. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon. ~ Edna Ferber

The missing girl - there had been unceasing news reports, always flashing to that achingly ordinary school portrait of the vanished teen, you know the one, with the rainbow-swirl background, the girl's hair too straight, her smile too self-conscious, then a quick cut to the worried parents on the front lawn, microphones surrounding them, Mom silently tearful, Dad reading a statement with quivering lip - that girl, that missing girl had just walked past Edna Skylar. ~ Harlan Coben

Her little treasures. Each item reminding her of someone or of something. ~ Edna O'Brien

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down! ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

So come on out, my dear old sweet Sister, - & we'll open our oysters together. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

There is no such thing as a beauty contest . . . Beauty is noncompetitive. Beauty of any kind stands alone, unmatched, inimitable, uncontested. ~ Edna Robinson

You lose in the end unless you know how the wheel is fixed or can fix it yourself. ~ Edna Ferber

That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love. ~ Edna O'Brien

No matter what the clocks and calendars say . . . The years between forty and fifty seem to take one. From thirty to forty takes two; twenty to thirty, three. From nine to nineteen takes twenty. ~ Edna Robinson

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence. ~ Edna O'Brien

Give back my book and take my kiss instead. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis. There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar, and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a man's best points. ~ Edna Ferber

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life is not sugar coated. ~ Edna Stewart

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Everybody seems normal, till you get to know them. ~ Edna Buchanan

A stony road, hard on the feet. I would beg for us to sit down but you discouraged it, knowing that sitting was fatal, because of the willpower required to get up again. ~ Edna O'Brien

Don't go; don't go! Oh! Edna, stay with me. ~ Kate Chopin

Then there were long, lazy summer afternoons when there was nothing to do but read. And dream. And watch the town go by to supper. I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung from small towns, or villages. They have had time to dream in their adolescence. No cars to catch, no matinees, no city streets, none of the teeming, empty, energy-consuming occupations of the city child. Little that is competitive, much that is unconsciously absorbed at the most impressionable period, long evenings for reading, long afternoons in the fields or woods. ~ Edna Ferber

Strindberg came to the rescue. Why, he had asked her, did every woman he ever met have to bring her bloody mother into the bed, every bloody woman, including his own wife, Siri. "You have a wife," she had said. ~ Edna O'Brien

Roast beef, medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. ~ Edna Ferber

Girls! Girls! Put some pep into your work. How would you act, for instance, if I told you that all for your salaries were to be raised?

I would drop dead. ~ Edna Wallace

Men give love because they want sex. Women give sex because they want love. That's the difference between men and women. Ever notice how when we talk about our love lives, it's always about a man? Singular. All most of us want is one good man. But when men talk, it's about women. Plural. They want as many as they can get. ~ Edna Buchanan

Time, That Is Pleased to Lengthen out the Day

Time, that is pleased to lengthen out the day
For grieving lovers parted or denied,
And pleased to hurry the sweet hours away
From such as lie enchanted side by side,
Is not my kinsman; nay, my feudal foe
Is he that in my childhood was the thief
Of all my mother's beauty, and in woe
My father bowed, and brought our house to grief.
Thus, though he think to touch with hateful frost
Your treasured curls, and your clear forehead line,
And so persuade me from you, he has lost;
Never shall he inherit what was mine.
When Time and all his tricks have done their worst,
Still will I hold you dear, and him accurst. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay